Wild Strawberries

Wild Strawberries

Synopsis

Bergman’s most popular film alongside The Seventh Seal similarly packages troubling existential questions within a tightly structured narrative, offering charming, lighthearted passages for almost long enough to make one forget the morbid realities that undergird its story. Master silent film director Victor Sjöström is brilliantly cast as Dr. Borg, a chilly, antisocial medical professor whose long life has been defined by empty rationality and faded social connections, all of which has gained him a lousy reputation he fears he will carry to his death. Dr. Borg takes along his daughter-in-law on a cross-country road trip to receive an honorary degree, and the passing landscape stirs in him a flurry of childhood memories that Bergman interweaves seamlessly into the present moment. Wild Strawberries’ blend of a linear narrative with flashbacks and Bunuelian dream sequences was perceived as exotic and audacious upon release, but now the film plays as one of Bergman’s sturdiest and most straightforwardly earnest pieces of storytelling.” – Harvard Film Archive